[Polyhedron] Are women interested in this type of fantasy?

[KitanaVorr]

Honestly...

Its a fantasy game so you can really play any game you like. As long as the full spectrum is out there, you can do that. Men, women whoever can play this game how they see fit. Some women like to be the damsel in distress sometimes and sometimes they don't.

Now if the question is if women would fall for a guy they rescued, really I think Randomling and Buttercup have got it. It would depend on the woman's taste and on the man in question. You can't really pigeon hole all women into one type, just like you shouldn't do that to men as well. At different times in your life, you want different men. Its not always the same type of man all the time. We like to experiment too, ya know.

What I don't understand is why this is suddenly referred to as the "romance" genre and suddenly specifically targeted toward women. There are plenty of games that include romance in it in all types of fashion (women rescuing men, vice versa and etc) that don't need that title. I don't think we need to title it something different in the D&D world.

 

[d20Dwarf]

but there's been no real reason to give scientific creedence to the statement that men and women have fundamental mental or gender differences that arise from brain differences.

Ummmmm, I posted several links to scientific articles that only scratch the surface of research in this area, and included a couple of pages with extensive bibliographies.

Anyone that says there is no scientific research in this area has his head up his dicebag.

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

Originally posted by SemperJase
The introduction then goes on to say that while the traditional literature has men rescuing women "there is no need to enforce such gender steriotyping in a modern RPG; it is just as proper to have heroic female characters save handsome (but somewhat ineffectual) males as the reverse.

It seems they are trying to turn human nature upside down.

Well, you have one faulty premise already. Going with the conceit of the genre - perhaps the heroic woman is from the alien world (or to really flip the notion around, she both from the alien/heroic world and she's the Flash Gordon - i.e. she has come to Earth/Faerun/etc). What is there to say the normative behaviour isn't women saving men?

Second - turning basic genre presumptions upside down is a time-tested and proven literrary trick that works rather well when done properly. The popularity of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was in part due to just this sort of "upside down" turn - the blonde/ditzy victim as the strong/tough hero. Buffy also fell in love with at least 4 (or 5 if you count Parker) guys who she had to defend at least at one point or another - the boy in Never Kill A Boy On Your First Date (first season), Scott Hope, chipped-Spike and de-superpowered Reilly.

This genre is significant for romance. I just don't believe that women would be romantically interested in a romance with men they had to rescue.

Depends on the nature of the rescue.

In this case, the stereotype is based on reality.

Er.... I'll leave this be because of the format for this forum (as opposed to RPG.net), but I'll just say you are partly right in that the stereotype has a relationship with reality, but as reality changes the stereotype's relations to it will change as well.

Men and women are wired differently.

Again - not something to get into here, but this is a very superficial way of looking at it, and not generalizeable to every culture or epoch. There is some truth to it, but not as much as you would think and not for the reasons you would necessarily think is the case either.

- Ma'at

 

[KitanaVorr]

Originally posted by d20Dwarf
Ummmmm, I posted several links to scientific articles that only scratch the surface of research in this area, and included a couple of pages with extensive bibliographies.

Anyone that says there is no scientific research in this area has his head up his dicebag.

Well - remember that scientific research can be very biased. You would have to check on how the study was done, who did it, and if the methods precluded any possible unconscious tampering of the data.

Statistics can be very misleading. I suspect that this research was done without thought to the CULTURAL differences in the perceived role of women.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Well - remember that scientific research can be very biased. You would have to check on how the study was done, who did it, and if the methods precluded any possible unconscious tampering of the data.

Statistics can be very misleading. I suspect that this research was done without thought to the CULTURAL differences in the perceived role of women.

You may apply some level of skepticism to a single set of data or research group, but when nearly the whole of scientific research on the subject agrees, it's madness to do so. The entire scientific community is not biased, it's generally the people reading and interpreting the data that give it spin. There is simply no denying the biological differences in the brains of men and women. It has nothing to do with cultural blah blah roles blah. Biology precedes sociology, and in many cases supercedes it in a properly functioning brain.

Am I the only one that can see my message? Because it seems like people replying to it haven't bothered to look at it...which is not surprising given that the results are so completely antithetical to what the cultural assailants would have you believe.

 

[Mallus]

OT

I don't have anything relevant to say just yet, so I'll put in a plug for one of the finest writers of Planetary Romances, one C. L. Moore. She wrote Judgement Night and Jirel of Joiry, among others.

She often wrote under male psuedonyms, such as Lewis Padgett. Need I mention a lot of her works were slam-bang late pulp age adventures starring kick-ass girls?

 

[el-remmen]

Firstly, Let's try to keep the political baiting and heated words out of this thread. It walks a fine line.

Secondly, Personally, there is nothing I want more than some hot buxom she-hulk of a woman (she can even be green) to bust in somewhere kick some ass and carry me off to her headquarters and shag me rotten.

She may have the martial skills, strength and sense of adventure - but I have others equally respectable skills. . .

 

[CaptainCalico]

As a female gamer who also reads romance novels I have to chime in to say that a central theme of “traditional” romance novels is strong women rescuing ineffectual men, only the strength and ineffectuality are in the sphere of emotions rather than physicality, e.g. instead of beating up villains and pulling him off the train track she braves the demons born of his tormented past to lead him to a new life (the whole Beauty and the Beast motif). It has become so much of a cliché that some romance authors have started turning that on its head by making the woman the one with the dark past and “issues”, who has to be “healed” by the perfectly nice, well-adjusted man. They sell reasonably well.

In trying to think of examples of physically strong women rescuing somewhat ineffectual men, and then falling in love with them, the first one that came to mind was Veronica and Malone in “The Lost World” TV series. Malone is no wimp, but he is a reporter (i.e. more of a bard than a fighter) cast into a prehistoric world full of dinosaurs and savages. Veronica was raised in that world and she is extremely capable (ranger? maybe a barbarian, she does have a temper), and knowledgeable. She regularly has to help Malone out of trouble and there is no doubt that if it ever came to a knockdown fight she would wipe the floor with him, yet she falls in love with him. The tension comes from Malone – he is attracted to her, but he does get uncomfortable with the role-reversal.

For myself, as a player, I would be interested in adventures where my female character had the chance to rescue a male NPC, rescuing people is fun! If said male NPC then wanted to show his everlasting appreciation…………

 

[Kahuna Burger]

You may apply some level of skepticism to a single set of data or research group, but when nearly the whole of scientific research on the subject agrees, it's madness to do so. The entire scientific community is not biased, it's generally the people reading and interpreting the data that give it spin. There is simply no denying the biological differences in the brains of men and women. It has nothing to do with cultural blah blah roles blah. Biology precedes sociology, and in many cases supercedes it in a properly functioning brain.

Am I the only one that can see my message? Because it seems like people replying to it haven't bothered to look at it...which is not surprising given that the results are so completely antithetical to what the cultural assailants would have you believe.

Well, your use of a term like "cultural assailants" puts you pretty far down on the respectometer at one shot, but I'll give it a moment anyway. The entire scientific community has been biased in the past, and allowed blatently rediculous ideas on race and gender to be put forth as fact. While I like Dawkins better for popularized biology, Stephen Gould is great for pointing out where science has gone embarrassingly wrong.

As for your post of cites...

One blatently political peice which refers to studies but gives no information on the statistical relevance to the data, or variable spread within the groups as opposed to between them...

One incredibly vauge comment about genetic differences being "greater than thought" with no impact on psychology whatsoever...

One purely anatomical test on cadavers (no ages listed, no reason to believe that the results are not due to socialization, as brains can be like muscles, they grow in the ways you use them) reported in a journalistic rather than scientific fashion, and with no actual data on possible behavioural results...

Another summary article, long on generalizations, short on useful facts... makes some hard to back up claims about infant research (wich I've had some expereince with and know is very hard to do objectively) the same old comments about differences in adult brains and then reduces the validity of those itself when it quotes "Interestingly, when we deliberately change sex-role behavior -- say, men become more nurturing or women more aggressive -- our hormones and even our brains respond by changing, too" indicating that the brain differences may be effect and not cause...

...and some references to other opinion peices which may or may not have useful scientific data...

You have linked to NOTHING which supports a premise that men and woman have biological, geneticly based behavioural differences great enough to warrent the sweeping generalizations people have made about how (all) men will behave as opposed to (all) women. At best you might have the kind of statements you can make on height - The average man is taller than the average woman, but the variation within the two groups is greater than that between, and its better to see how tall the person you're talking to really is rather than guessing based on their gender.

Oh, and as far as I'm concerned any more attempts to waste my time (or give weight to your arguments) with a pile of links will be ignored. That was far more offensive to me as a scientist than a woman.

Kahuna burger

 

[el-remmen]

mod hat on

Um, easy there, okay? I'm tired of warning people here - let's drop all references to political correctness, and all references to gender bias except where it directly relates to and is in the context of a game or game setting, ok?

Anybody keeps sniping and snapping at each other and the thread goes bye-bye.

/mod hat off